Main menu

Idaho Couple Buys Home Infested With Snakes

After buying their dream home, an Idaho couple discovered the deal was too good to be true.

Ben and Amber Sessions bought the Rexburg, Idaho, home for less than $180,000. They were surprised to get such a good deal for the home, but it turned out that there was something even more surprising about the house waiting for them - it’s full of snakes.

Locals refer to the Sessions’ house as “snake house” because it supposedly sits on a nest of non-venomous garter snakes.

The Sessions family bought the home in September 2009 and it seemed ideal. After moving in, they started to notice snakes all over the property.

Popular Video

A police officer saw a young black couple drive by and pulled them over. What he did next left them stunned:

Popular Video

A police officer saw a young black couple drive by and pulled them over. What he did next left them stunned:

“After we moved in, it was really horrible,” Amber Sessions told ABC News. “There were snakes in the walls, We could hear them and then our water tasted like how they smell.”

According to Sessions, their real estate agent told them that the previous owners “made up” the snake problem to get out of their mortgage. He told them that precautions had been taken to keep snakes away.

The couple signed paperwork acknowledging the stories about snakes when they purchased the house, based on assurances that the stories were not true.

Shortly after moving in, Amber, who was pregnant at the time, saw eight snakes in one day. She contacted her agent, who told her that he would take care of it with traps.

Three months after moving in, the problem continued to worsen. Amber began to worry that coming across a surprise snake in the house could cause her to miscarry.

“One day, we caught 43 snakes in total and that was it,” she said. “The next morning I almost stepped on one in our house and I had enough, we can’t do this anymore. I don’t know how we stayed there as long as we did.”

“It felt like living in Satan’s lair,” Amber told the Associated Press. “That’s the only way to really explain it.”

The couple abandoned the home in December of 2009, the day after their daughter was born. Because of the paperwork they had already signed acknowledging the snakes, they decided to file for bankruptcy.

“We’re not going to pay for a house full of snakes,” Ben said.

According to Amber Sessions, her husband was diagnosed with snake-related post-traumatic stress disorder after their experience in the house.

Before the Sessions’ bought the home, Neal and Denise Ard owned it. In 2006, the couple shared a video on YouTube showing buckets overflowing with snakes all over the house. The Ards eventually left the home and tried to sue their real estate agent. Their lawsuit was eventually dismissed.